How to make your own compost tea

Mods Edit : Could members please refrain from posting copyrighted material without quoting the source. Thank you.

 

I've been brewing compost tea for a few weeks now and have been spending a lot of time researching .... I recently posted a thread on another forum as regards what I have learned so far .... herewith my findings:

in a nutshell, you brew a 'tea' using compost and a few other ingredients ... you feed the bacteria and fungi in compost with a food such as unsulphered black strap molasses and aerate the water to keep it oxygenated, and by doing so, the bacteria and fungi multiply rapidly

this is then added to your plants as either a foliar spray or as a soil drench, or both

the beneficial fungi and bacteria then feed and enrich the soil, which in turn benefits the plant or shrub or tree ....

more info here:



and more info here:
http://www.soilfoodweb.com/sfi_approach3.html

so, the basic recipe is not a fertilizer, but a soil innoculant

however, with adding nutrients, you then 'supercharge' the brew, which in turn feeds and nourishes the soil aswell as fertilizers the plants

this is taking off big time, especially in the USA, and I have been reading lots about this on vegetable forums such as the forum where people discuss growing giant pumkins (they grow them over 1000 pounds in weight), aswell as forums where guys grow 'stuff' in their lofts

some companies sell 5 gallon brewer kits for big money, however, you can buy the components cheaply off ebay .... all you need is an aquarium airpump that delivers at least 45 litres/min air (costs £30), 2 decent aquarium airstones (I use a round one that is 150mm in diameter and a normal cylindrical shaped one) .... some airtube, and I also bough an aquarium heater for a few pounds (this is optional)

I 'splashed' out on a bucket and paid £15 for one of the 5 gallon (25 litre buckets) that guys use for home brewing beer

a basic recipe for 5 gallons is 2 cups of good compost (such as worm compost, also known as vermicompost or worm humis), 2 tablespoons of organic unsulphered black strap mollases (I bought a large bottle for £2 from a health shop), and 5 gallons of water

if you are using tap water, let it bubble for a couple of hours to remove the chlorine before adding any ingredients

it's better to use rainwater or pondwater (we have 3 large ponds in my village which are not fed by streams/rivers (they are groundwater, and the ponds are teeming with fish)

some countries add chloramine to their municipal water .... this poses a problem, however, my area (Anglican water does not)

if you use the compost and molasses, you brew it for 24 hours and then can apply it neat to the plants as either a foliar spray or a drench or both .... you can use a 'teabag' for the compost and ingredients, if using as a spray, however, the mesh has to be minimum 400 microns (they say the best teabag is a paint strainer bag that the automotive industry uses (panelbeaters) ... do not use a stocking, as the mesh openings are too small

and if you use it in a sprayer, you have to be careful of the nozzle as it kills the bacteria / fungi (some say the best sprayer is a hand held concrete sprayer (they cost approx £150)

these are the 2 recipes I am using (some of the componets can be bought from ebay or you local hydroponics store (we have 2 in my area and I never even knew they existed until I googled .... they also stock imported composts, nutrienst and worm compost)

2 recipes that I currently use...

(1st one is for general garden plants during spring and summer and will be added once a month via drenching aswell as applied on the leaves via waterbucket....

2nd recipe is for lawns and will be added via foliar spray once a month)....

recipes are for 5 gallon batches (25 litres), and I set the heater temp at 20 degrees C, and have a 150mm circular airstone on the bottom of the bucket, and a 150mm long cylindrical airstone in the bucket .... I brew for 24 hrs, then add the nutrients at the end just before using the tea


recipe 1 for all plants/shrubs in the garden)
heat and aerate the pond water overnight, then add the following :

2 heaped tablespoons of black strap unsulphered molasses (organic)

2 cups of worm humis

1 cup of homemade well rotted compost

1 cup of forest topsoil

1 cup of normal garden topsoil (from my own garden)

1/2 cup of volcanic rock dust (available from B&Q)

I brew this for 24 hrs at 20 degrees C, then add the following (doses are what is recommended on the labels on the bottles)

Biobizz Fish mix

plant magic oldtimer grow

maxicorp seaweed extract

root juice

bio silicon

biowetter (yucca extract)

I don't place the ingredients in a bag/stocking, as I use a watering bucket to distribute/ foliar feed (I cannot afford a concrete sprayer yet)

--------------------------


recipe 2 (for lawns) ... I have not made this yet, but will do so when I can afford a sprayer

for lawns, the same recipe as above, however, I will substitute the root juice with Canna Nitrogen 27% (To green it up quicker) .... I may also add 1/4 cup of bloodmeal (for extra nitrogen) .... this will be added with a sprayer (low pressure and with a straight nozzle with a #20 nozzle (400 micron), and will be added once per month from April till the end of October

for mid November, I will change the recipe and look at subsituting the Nitrogen with a higher P and K ingredient such as Bat Guano (the one with the low Nitrogen), ... that will be the last feed until spring the next year

for the lawn fertilizer/tea, ingredients will be placed in a paint strainer bag with a 400 micron mesh during brewing, together with the one airstone in the bag, and the circular airstone on the bottom of the bucket

---------------------------

if you brew, 12 hrs is enough for a bacterial dominated tea ... 24 hrs for a fungal tea ... brewing temperature must not exceed 20 degrees C

at the end of the brewing, the brew should smell like fresh soil/sweet .... if it smells sour, dont use it... the brew has to be used as soon as possible after switching off the airpump ....(not later than 2hrs, as the fungi/bacteria start dying as soon as you cut off the oxygen supply)

and clean all items straight after (I fill the bucket with clean water and add a few capfulls of the stuff used to clean baby's bottles, then let the airpump run for an hour or so, so as to clean the airstones .... after that, risnse everything again with clean water, so as to get rid of the bleach smell from the baby bottle cleaner)

I'm still learning, but thats the way I understand it so far ....

 

This seems to be a copy from your web site, which in turn appears to be a blatant copy from a more comprehensive and more useful article in Fine Gardening:

http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/brewing-compost-tea.aspx

 

Different thing though MF ? Yours is a fertilizer whereas * Dim*'s is a "tonic" (only word I could think of to describe the difference ...)

 

does not work out too expensive, as the nutrients are used sparingly (some only need 2ml-3ml per litre of water)

I worked out that it costs under £6 per 20 litres ... you only need to use it during the growing season (March till end of October) ... and only need to use it once per month

If used as a foliar spray, and used without diluting, 20 litres covers a huge area, and for a smaller garden, you will also be able to spray the lawn .... if you dilute it with rainwater, you will cover a huge area

so that is 8 months @ £6 which equates to £48 per year ....

no too bad, considering what's in the tea?

as regards comfrey and chicken poo, that is liquid fertilizer (which is also very good ), and is not actively aerated compost tea (as Kristen has stated)

I also recently read that you can make liquid fertilizer (similar to the comfrey tea) by adding stinging nettles to water, sealing the lid and letting it stand for 3-4 weeks ....

 

I find most things grow quite happily without any organic/ chemical preparations.

In fact, these days I seem to spend more time hacking back plants, than actually encouraging them.

 

I've been known to become fanatic ...



spoke to a mate today who owns a plot in an allotment .... offered him compost tea for free ....

he said no thanks, as he struggles as it is, pulling out weeds daily, and he feels that by using compost tea, it may make the weeds go gigantic and rampant

 

after 2 applications over 4 weeks, herewith some results on 2 Huechera Georgia peach:

a bit unfair to say that it's due to the compost tea on it's own, as I have loaded the compost tea with nutrients and 'additives'

something has been munching the leaves, and it's not snails, as i have added slug/snail bait from mid fed ....

yesterday, I added provado vine weevil killer .... I will spray the leaves with normal provado from next week

the 1st pic shows a georgia Peach Huechera that has not shown much new growth since winter, and has only been watered with tap water ....

the 2nd photo shows a Georgia peach huechera that has been fed the supercharged compost tea twice in 4 weeks .... the leaves are huge! ...

I have tested this on 8 huechera all planted the same way, the same size, and in the same light/sun aspect ....

all the huechera looked the same as in the 1st photo before I added the compost tea

the 4 that have not received compost tea all look similar to the 1st photo, and the 4 that received compost tea look similar to the 2nd photo

wrong way of testing, as I need to compare it with something like miracle grow or similar

I will try testing on several ferns in the same garden

I have 2 ricinus seedlings in 9cm pots on my bathroom window .... they were both the same size when I potted them .... one has been fed with compost tea, and has grown twice the size of the other that has only received water .... this is over a period of 3 weeks (2 applications of compost tea)

without compost tea:


with compost tea: (the fleece on the side is covering a T-rex which i covered yesterday, incase of cold weather)